Sting in the tail

01 May 2013 Meteorologists have gained a better understanding of how storms like the one that battered Britain in 1987 develop, making them easier to predict. University of Manchester scientists, working with colleagues in Reading, Leeds and the US, have described how these types of cyclones can strengthen to become violent windstorms. The Great Storm of 1987, which famously caught out weatherman Michael Fish, left a trail of destruction when winds up to 120mph swept across southern England and northern France, killing 22 people. More recently, gusts of 100mph in January 2012 damaged buildings in Scotland and cut power to tens of thousands of homes. Such storms are characterised by severe gale-force winds known as sting jets that descend from several kilometres above the surface. "Sting jets are these regions of strong winds that tend to occur to the south and south-east of the low centre at the end of the tail of the front,” explained Professor David Schultz, who led the research in Manchester's School of Earth, Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences. "These winds are generated from are a descending motion from air that is several kilometres above the surface to the north and north-east of the depression.